The river doesn’t ask permission. It just takes.
That’s the hard truth residents of Borguli village in Arunachal Pradesh’s East Siang district are living with every monsoon season. The Siang River — mighty, relentless, and increasingly unpredictable — has been gnawing away at farmland across several villages under Mebo Sub-Division, and locals say the situation has crossed from worrying to desperate.
Fields that once grew rice, cash crops, and bamboo are gone. Not damaged — gone. Swallowed by a river that shows no sign of pulling back.
Otil Tayeng knows that loss better than most. He has watched the Siang take eight full acres of his bamboo plantation. Eight acres. That’s not just land — that’s income, savings, and the kind of slow investment that takes years to grow. His bamboo grove had been a steady source of money for his family. Now it exists only in memory, somewhere under the current.
“My agricultural land is the primary source of livelihood for my family,” Tayeng said. “It is what helps me support my children’s education.” The erosion, he added, is not stopping. Whatever farmland remains is still at risk.
The problem didn’t appear overnight. According to Tayeng, erosion in the area began back in 2021 — five years ago — and has been intensifying with every passing year. Slow at first, easy to hope it would stabilise. It never did. If anything, the river has grown bolder, creeping steadily closer to the wet rice cultivation fields that Borguli depends on most. Lose those, and the village loses its food security entirely.
The wider damage stretches across multiple villages in the Mebo Sub-Division. Large tracts of cash crops and bamboo groves have already been washed away. Families that depend on agriculture — which is most families out here — are watching their futures erode alongside the riverbank. It’s the kind of slow-motion crisis that rarely makes national headlines until it becomes a catastrophe.
Villagers aren’t waiting for that moment. They’ve raised their voices and appealed directly to Mebo MLA Oken Tayeng and Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, urging both leaders to treat the situation as a priority. Their demand is clear: permanent embankment reinforcement and effective flood-protection infrastructure — not a seasonal patch-up, but something built to last.
Temporary measures, they say, are no longer enough. Every year the river comes back stronger. Every year more land disappears. And every year, families in Borguli and the surrounding villages are left wondering whether they’ll still have something to farm when the floods finally recede.
The Siang is one of Arunachal’s most powerful rivers, prone to fierce flooding and shifting courses during the monsoon. Communities in the valleys it cuts through have always lived with its presence. But there’s a real difference between living beside a river and slowly losing everything to it.
What these farmers are asking for isn’t extraordinary. It’s basic protection for the land that feeds their families, educates their children, and keeps entire communities standing. The question isn’t whether the government can build embankments along the Siang. It’s whether it will move fast enough — before the river makes that question irrelevant.
